Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos were married in May 1996 after first meeting on 'All My Children.'
Kelly Ripa's secret to a long and happy marriage is that there "is no secret." The TV personality and Mark Consuelos tied the knot on May 1, 1996, and 27 years later they're still going strong.
"It goes fast, I'm telling you," Ripa tells ET's Rachel Smith of her decades-long marriage while promoting her SiriusXM podcast, Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa. "...You’re going to go through things, there are ups and downs."
Offering up some advice, the 52-year-old Live With Kelly and Mark host adds, "The thing is, don't panic. ...I think if you ask either one of us how long we've been married we'll probably say something in between three and eight years because that seems like a reasonable number to be married. But then we look and we have adult children and we've gone through a lot of things together. And our kids will show us documentaries that they think we'd find interesting and I'll say to them, 'Oh, you know, Dad and I were married when that went down.' And they're like, 'What? But look at how old-fashioned it is.' They can't conceptualize. It's funny. It goes faster than you think."
Ripa and Consuelos, who first met on the set of All My Children, are parents to 26-year-old Michael, 21-year-old Lola, and 20-year-old Joaquin. The couple has been co-hosting Live together since Ryan Seacrest's exit earlier this year, and Ripa is also heading up her own podcast, Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa.
While she's interviewed celebrities and powerful people for decades on TV, the podcast gives her an opportunity to dig deeper with her guests.
"When you do a daily talk show, which I enjoy very much obviously, you're really only getting to talk to people for three or four minutes max and you’re talking about what they have to promote," Ripa explains of the difference between Live and her podcast. "When you have a long-format discussion, a hour-long conversation that happens off camera without the fear or terror of not looking good on camera, it takes all of that anxiety away. You're really able to have a true conversation. There are times we set out to cover a specific topic and we go way off track which is the best part of the show."
She quips, "That and the part that I don't have to wear makeup, that I'm in sweats and I'm in my son's old bedroom at a folding card table that we got from Amazon."
Ripa isn't kidding. "Andy Cohen came to the podcast studio and he walked in and goes, 'Oh, you really are doing it from Michael's bedroom.' And he's like, 'Oh, you really are. It really is a folding card table.' He thought I was exaggerating but I don't exaggerate."
Cohen has another connection to the Ripa-Consuelos family, as Michael is now working within the Real Housewives franchise, which Cohen executive produces.
"Andy didn't even know Michael was working on the production side of, I think it was either on New Jersey on New York when Andy was like, 'When were you going to tell me Michael was working for [Housewives]?'... I was like, 'I didn't know whether or not I should fill you in.' Michael tells me nothing."
Gushing over her eldest son, Ripa notes, "He really has so much integrity. He holds those [non-disclosure agreements] to heart. He does not tell me anything which I resent because he's a child I sent to film and television school. I was like, 'I sent you to NYU. You owe me a secret.'"
While her son isn't talking, Ripa is getting celebrities to open up on her podcast in a way fans may not see on Live.
"Listen, I'm just going to say one thing, I did not ask Matthew McConaughey whether or not he was related to Woody Harrelson at all. It came up very organically. It is one of those things where we were having a very interesting conversation and I told him that he and Woody Harrelson were my idea of a super couple," she recalls of her talk with the Oscar winner, who has now said he might be actually related to his True Detective co-star. "He was like, 'You know, we could be related.' I didn't ask a provocative question. I just made a statement about how much I love them both individually. ...I'm not there to do a gotcha podcast. We just have these very revealing moments that happen and I'm always honored that people trust me enough to tell me things that maybe they would not tell other people."
As for her dream guest, Ripa tells ET that she's "going hard for Madonna."
"We made our pitch, we've shot our shot," she teases. "We'll see what happens. I mean, she's a little busy right now working on the tour."
New episodes of SiriusXM's Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa are released on Wednesdays.
RELATED CONTENT:
